HD-DVD Headaches

[steelersfan]

New to MakeMKV: Excellent program: While lurking through the forums, waiting for my external blu-ray drive to arrive I found some forum posts about users making use of the long since forgotten XBox 360 HD-DVD drive to rip long forgotten HD-DVD discs. So I get the wild idea, since I have one of those drives and a bunch HD-DVD discs, why not try to rip them and get some much needed practice using MakeMKV. And that's where the nightmare starts. After installing the program, I'm running OSX 10.8.2 (Desktop and Laptop), and the HD-DVD is recognized using both computers. I'm using a default install, and although I can rip the main feature (tried 2 different movies, (We Were Soldiers, and Next) and they complete without errors, I can not get them to play video on 2 different media servers (PopcornHour A-100) and Apple TV1 repurposed and running crystalbuntu/XBMC. However when those 2 rips are played via VLC on my Macs, the video and audio play fine. I have also ripped a DVD, which plays fine using my PopcornHour, the ATV1 and via VLC on the Mac. Sorry for the long winded post, but one last point to make. I also punted and went back to ver 1.7.0, since I read here that HD-DVD ripped worked fine in that version, with version 1.7.1 and 1.7.2 having issues with HD-DVD ripping. I got the same results, so is there something I'm missing? Some obscure setting I'm missing that needs to be set to rip HD-DVD's properly? I'll keep reading the forums looking for answers, but I welcome any help

[Heath]

I need to subscribe to this, I have an old XBOX HD-DVD Drive and a ton of old HD-DVD's that could use a ripping...

[Smithcraft]

There is a thread about problematic HD-DVDs, so you could check that.

Otherwise, if it plays fine in VLC, I would say there is an issue with the playback hardware.

SC

[paulster]

I've ripped 20 or so for playback on the Popcorn Hour and had no real problems. To get 24p video you need to demux, remove the pulldown flags and remux, but that wouldn't stop it playing. And subs cause an issue but they can easily be converted to PGS.

One thought though: are you using an AV decoder/processor or going straight to a TV? 90% of HD-DVDs use Dolby Digital Plus soundtracks and the Popcorn Hour might not be able to decode these (mine's on a processor so it's not going to be an issue).

[steelersfan]

Actually, I ran across that problematic HD-DVD thread, and it offered some insight but I'll take another look at that thread, and I've seriously considered the real possibility that it might be the hardware, but the hardware plays other .mkv's without a problem, and I have been able to rip atleast 1 DVD using the same hardware/software combinations, and the DVD rip seems to play fine.

For Paulster: I might have slightly misstated the problem: It's starts to play and freezes (PopCornHour) or it plays (no Video, but audio track appears to be playing fine ( I normally stop playback after a minute or 2 after realizing the video isn't going to play. What program(s) would be used to demux, remove the pulldown flags, and remux? I'm using a Denon AVR-3311CI between the devices and the TV (everything is connected HDMI).

[paulster]

eac3to (free) can pull out the video track and remove the pulldown flags at the same time. Then MKVtoolnix (also free) can merge the video stream back into the MKV in place of the original stream.

Since I've done this to all my files to get true 24p video you might find that the process of demuxing and remuxing yields an MKV that the Popcorn Hour is happier with.

[steelersfan]

Closing the loop on this thread (my apologies for not following up sooner). Turns out all I needed to do, once I ripped a HD DVD was to then use Handbrake to (transcode ??) the rip to mp4. That solved 2 problems for me. 1st problem: I'm using a repurposed ATV1/crystalbuntu/XBMC media server on my main home theater system and the XBMC currently doesn't play the video (black screen) of ripped HD DVD's if VC-1 was used as the video codec. Handbraking the subsequent .mkv file to mp4 solves that problem. 2nd problem: HD DVD's ripped with makemkv just won't play on "my" PopCornHour A-100, but HandBraking the ripped .mkv to mp4 format solves the PopcornHour playback problem as well. So except for the extra time it takes to run the ripped .mkv through Handbrake, I'm a happy camper. Thanks to all.